1. Field of Invention
The method and apparatus of the present invention is related to Automated Media Creation and Publication Engine with Resource Saver, Inventory Control, and Ticket Distribution Vending System.
The invention also relates to the Automated Media Creation, Publication, Placement, and Control Engine with Processing and Communications Resource Saver, including a Sales and Inventory Control protocol, and a Reservation, Access, and Verification System Utilizing Ticket and Confirmation Replacement Methods.
In another aspect the invention relates to Automated Media Creation, Publication, Placement, and Control Engine with Processing and Communications Resource Saver, including a Sales and Inventory Control protocol, and a Reservation, Access, and Verification System Replacing Traditional Ticket and Confirmation Methods.
In yet another aspect the invention relates to Automated Media Creation, Publication, Placement, and Control Engine, including a Sales and Inventory Control protocol with Processing and Communications Resource Saver, and a Reservation, Access, and Verification System Replacing Traditional Ticket and Confirmation Methods.
Prior art for electronic and other presentations of commercial products, goods, and services is accomplished by individual sellers or seller organizations or their agents submitting materials to each and every media outlet or to stand-alone electronic malls, outlets, or directories. Most sellers choose the media or outlet for the sale of their products, goods, or services; obtain the guidelines and requirements; negotiate a contract; and then compile material and design individual presentations to conform to the requirements for each media. This time consuming and costly business necessity has created huge marketing programs and agencies for large businesses.
When created individually by sellers or seller organizations, media presentations may not be standardized in that they do not carry consistent, up-to-date inventory, pricing, and information for the consumer. A buyer may find conflicting presentations on different electronic or traditional channels or outlets. The management for the advertising and electronic commerce for many small to mid-size sellers falls either as additional duties to current staff or as new departments. In the media of electronic presentations, the lack of experience may result in presentations that are cumbersome, ineffective, or not accessible to the widest range of consumer. Currently, the non-standardized format for the presentation of products, goods, and services provides for both the advantage of allowing unlimited creativeness in presentation and the disadvantage, in inexperienced hands, of not delivering the most effective and motivating sales message. In many cases, this lack of standardization appropriate to each and every venue or media outlet may result in the presenting of goods and services in a way that does not entice the buyer to make a purchase.
In the prior art, electronic Internet and Intranet presentations are developed either as static files that require constant and laborious manual updating or as dynamic (database-driven)
Although the dynamic presentations require less labor to produce and update, the various Internet or Intranet search or retrieval programs do not generally read or index them because of their xe2x80x9cdynamic, database-drivenxe2x80x9d nature. This fact alone substantially reduces their effectiveness in reaching the most motivated buying public because those presentations are largely invisible to the wide range of automated searches conducted by potential buyers. With either design choice, substantial cost is experienced for the small to mid-size seller, either in the form of labor intensive presentation methods or in lost sales opportunity, which can never be recovered.
The electronic Internet malls and electronic directories, although generally much better staffed and able to produce effectively designed and edited content to motivate the buyer, suffer in part from the same dilemma. They are still faced with the same no-win choice between the labor intensive creation and placement for each presentation that gets the maximum visibility to the search methods of potential buyers and the easier database-driven presentation which get minimal visibility. One of the disadvantages to the advertising client of these electronic directories is that they find themselves publishing the same information in multiple directories or indexes as well as in their own stand-alone presentations in order to obtain the maximum coverage for access to the buying public. This supervision of multiple presentations is a control and management problem that is very costly and inefficient for the seller.
Electronic malls and electronic directories also experience a high ratio of cost to generated income associated with sales, billing, and collections. The clients of these electronic malls and directories are typically contracted for some period of time and then billed for that period of time during the contract period.
Currently, the sale of tickets, passes, admission documents, or reserved services is performed in a variety of ways that require the buyer to either call the agent or seller, contact a third-party seller, have a specific ID for that venue or event, or make the purchase electronically using a network presentation of some kind, usually the Internet. Upon the sale of those tickets, passes, admission documents, or reserved services, the transaction requires, or, would be enhanced by, the physical delivery of those proofs of purchase. In the prior state of the art, proof of purchase must be picked up at some physical facility or point of sale when the tickets, passes, admission, or reserved services are purchased. Or, they must be delivered via mail or one of the overnight services, delivered by courier, or picked up on a xe2x80x9cwill callxe2x80x9d basis at the facility, site, business, or venue. Or, they must be a member and a holder of a specific ID used by that Seller of goods or services. All of these methods, at the very least, create additional inconvenience for the Buyer, requiring either travel time, waiting in lines, applying for and receiving specific ID card, or the uncertainty of last-minute delivery. In many cases where last-minute purchase decisions are made, there is additional expense to either the Buyer or Seller to insure timely delivery. In prior art, if the buyer is a existing member of an organization that issues special single purpose ID cards, the buyer may apply for and use that special single purpose ID card for access. This forces the buyer to have an individual access ID for each service that he wishes to periodically use.
In regards to the Resource Saver Protocol, prior art requires a message to be recorded and sent for each and every transaction (purchase) at a resource cost for each transaction or transmission. If a Seller has inventory on multiple electronic sites or channels, each and every site must be updated and adjusted on an individual basis, one-by-one manually. It must be noted that prior art does not even communicate in an automated two-way method. This means that in many cases, the Seller has to receive the transmission of sale, record the inventory change manually onto his management or accounting software, and then update each and every place where this inventory is offered for sale. Through prior art, buyers and sellers often experience mistakes in over-selling or overbooking products, goods, or service because of the delays of manual updating.
The invention allows sellers to present their inventory, products, goods and services in a choice of one or a variety of supported media outlets: in print, such as newspapers, magazines, periodicals, guidebooks, catalogs, brochures, fliers, and directories; in electronic form, such as online directories, web sites, bulletin boards, news groups, CD-ROMs, and interactive media and networks; and in other media, such as billboards, skywriters, bus benches, radio, interactive kiosk and any other form of customer outreach or information distribution. When these media choices are made, the present invention prompts the seller for information that is then used in the creation of presentations for the media outlets he has chosen. The Presentation Rules Database holds all the criteria, formatting architecture, and distribution factors for each participating media outlet. The present invention""s Presentation Generation Program, along with the Presentation Rules Database, then creates a presentation for each and every media outlet the seller has chosen. The Presentation Generation Program then either transmits the presentation to the appropriate destination or holds it for a publication date to be submitted for a particular deadline or predetermined promotional market.
The seller can then print out a report that shows him each presentation, distribution or media outlet, and the pricing of each media choice for an overall marketing valuation.
The present invention allows the Seller to update, change, control inventory, and automatically process sales either from his in-house or third party accounting or management software that has a compatible communication component with the present invention or in the present invention. He can accomplish this updating and inventory control to all media outlets simultaneously.
The invention is a method and apparatus that allows for the creation of presentations for the commerce of products, goods and services for any and all size of business; the accessibility of those presentations to a vast population of the buying public both in print, electronic, interactive electronic, and other media; the sale, reservation, and purchasing of those products, goods and services; the confirmation of these purchases and reservations through a Network ID or confirmation system; and the management of inventory control through multiple media outlets while saving resources of processing, transmission, and communications.
The invention is a method and apparatus that allows for the creation of presentations that comply with the design and architectural requirements of any and all participating media. This is applicable to all media either in print, such as newspapers, magazines, advertisements, guidebooks, directories, fliers, and brochures; and electronic media, such as online directories and malls, web sites, bulletin boards, news groups, CD-ROMs, and interactive media and networks; and other media, such as billboards, skywriters, bus benches, radio, interactive kiosk, and any other form of customer advertising, outreach, or information distribution. These presentations can be updated for either presentation content or inventory control in near real time, by either manual or automatic means, via electronic message units from third-party management or inventory control software. Electronic presentations created can be either static open-access or database driven dynamic server presentations. Where appropriate, these presentations allow for the sale of products, goods, or services and for the making of payments by buyers. Inventory adjustments for production, sales, and other reasons are made in near real time, allowing for an accurate presentation of availability of inventory to buyers. The present invention allows for lower cost to management when used with all media outlets by creating a self-serve, automated billing environment for the seller""s creation and display of presentations.
The invention is a method and apparatus that allows for the creation of both static and dynamic Internet and Intranet presentations for the sale of products, goods, and services to be accessible to the maximum number buyers and the interactive purchase of those products, goods and service. The present invention is a method and apparatus that allows buyers to purchase products, goods and service electronically and receive confirmation of that purchase.
The invention allows for the verification and substantiation of the purchase of access or admission to those services or events that traditionally have controlled access by means of tickets, passes, admission documents, reservations, reservation confirmations, or other substantiation at the facility, site, business, or venue. The invention provides several methods for the buyer to provide a ID at the time of purchase, which is then transmitted electronically to the facility, site, business, or venue. That buyer Network ID is then confirmed by the facility, site, business, or venue by means of readers or scanners of the magnetic, smart, or optical ID cards or by other electronic means when biometric authentication is required. This confirmation may automatically result in the printing of the tickets, passes, admission documents, reservation confirmations, or other documents required for admittance or in the automatic and immediate physical admittance of the buyer or ID holder.
The present invention allows for both complete inventory control and management and the global updating and accessibility of real-time and time-sensitive inventory while saving communication resources and time for any and all businesses that sell products, goods, and services regionally or world-wide. The invention allows for a substantial reduction of the communications and computer resources necessary to control and coordinate the availability, presentation, and sales of common, unique, or time-sensitive products, goods, and services. The present invention allows for the sales process to be adjusted so as to optimize the communications and computer resources used in relationship to the sales volume and Seller, Buyer, and usage profiles.
Several objects and advantages of the Presentation Generation component of the present invention are:
To provide an effective system of edit and content control for the creation and publishing of commercial sales or information-oriented traditional media and electronic presentations in a cost-effective manner for small, medium, and large sellers of products, goods, and services. This invention improves on the prior art by creating a controlled, managed environment for the sellers in which to create their presentations. This invention automatically applies not only editing, style, graphics, data, and content controls but also design specification and architectural requirements to the design environment of all forms of specific member media venues or outlets, both electronic print and all other media formats.
To create open-access electronic presentations that can receive maximum electronic visibility from private, public, or commercial search algorithms and commercial search engines and indexes, as well as from other automated or on-demand computer search systems. This invention improves on the prior art by automatically publishing the information and data received from sellers in an open-access format that is readily available to public automatic search and index programs as well as to on-demand search programs. With this invention, the seller""s presentation can be published in several different directories or indexes, taking on a different style, look, and feel in each as a result of the automatic restructuring of the data entered by the seller. This is accomplished by using different presentation formatting guidelines and rules for the targeted directories or indexes. This single-entry and automatically distributed method is more efficient than managing each directory or index individually.
To allow sellers to create presentations on their computers that are automatically transmitted to be published and viewed on electronic networks and other traditional advertising media. The present invention partially resides on the sellers"" computers, controls and edits the presentation, and then automatically transmits that information and data for publication in traditional media and electronic networks.
To allow media venues, outlets, vendors, and representatives automated presentations giving media buyers"" self-serve access to their products and services.
To allow for the automatic publishing or updating of presentations within a simple environment that does not require lower-level coding or formatting of the presentation material. The present invention employs a text-only entry of information and data, thereby not requiring the seller to have knowledge of presentation computer codes or low-level formatting.
To allow for automatic global updating of the description, price, quantity, and availability of products, goods, and services in traditional periodic media or electronic presentations. The present invention allows for the direct input of this information as well as for the automatic transmission of presentation-related data by compatible third-party, accounting, inventory control, or other management software for the inclusion or updating of the electronic presentation through common message files read and transmitted by the present invention.
To allow for the central control and management of presentations, thereby allowing for a greater degree of promotion and flexibility of the category or group of products, goods, or services by the controlling server in order to attract more buyers. The present invention directs all presentations through a central controller, which standardizes the presentations within the style, editing, and content standards set by the controller standards for each presentation, directory, or index. All electronic interactive presentations are optimized for presentation search visibility by the controller and can then be globally refined, based on traffic analysis.
To provide lower overhead cost associated with sales, billing, and collections for the operators of the present invention. By creating a self-serve, automated, direct billing environment for the sellers to create their presentations in, the operators of the present invention will experience substantial savings over traditional sales and billing methods. Allowing the sellers to create their presentations with a cafeteria-style selection and billing that presents all their options, including the associated cost up front, will also result in greater add-on sales without the associated sales overhead.
Several objects and advantages of the Resource Saver Protocol component of the present invention are:
To allow for the presentation of availability of products, goods, and services for sale in a real-time environment without requiring constant real-time communications during the sales process.
To allow a substantial portion of the real-time sales to be completed without the overhead of a concurrent verification process.
To reduce the necessary processing and communications resources used to control inventory presentations of products, goods, and services.
To reduce the necessary processing and communications resources used to control sales and/or reservations of products, goods, and services.
To transfer communications and processing resources to time periods of lower utilization of those resources.
Several objects and advantages of the Network ID and Purchase Verification System component of the present invention are:
To allow for the replacement of traditional tickets, passes, admission documents, reservations, reservation confirmations, and other means of verification that require prior or xe2x80x9cwill callxe2x80x9d delivery to the buyer. The present invention improves on the prior art by creating a controlled universal ID at time of purchase that can be transmitted to the facility, site, business, or venue to be used for verification of the buyer and purchase. This ID can be used for one purchase or maintained within the network for future use as a permanent ID for the purchase and access to any facility, site, business, or venue that is represented by that instance of the present invention.
To allow for a more convenient method of purchase of tickets, passes, admission documents, or reserved services, or for the late purchase of those tickets, passes, admission documents, or reserved services beyond what would be feasible if physical delivery of the access or admission documents were required. The present invention allows for purchases to be made and buyer IDs to be transmitted to the facility, site, business or venue within a matter of minutes of the buyer arriving for admittance. By using an electronic network, Internet, Intranet, or phone service, a buyer could literally make the purchase by laptop computer with wireless modem or by cell phone from the car on the way to the facility, site, business, or venue for admittance. The invention, when used in conjunction with an electronic inventory-available presentation, can allow buyers to become aware of and take advantage of last-minute cancellations and changes of availability.
The invention reduces labor and material requirements by the sellers of tickets, passes, admission documents, or reserved services. The invention substantially reduces the labor and material requirement for fulfillment of purchases of tickets, passes, admissions, or reserved services in several ways. By eliminating the requirement of delivery of those documents that allow the buyer admittance, there is no outgoing correspondence and/or fulfillment package to prepare. The costs associated with shipping, tracking, or follow-up on lost items as well as the customer service costs that accompany late or poorly communicated delivery instructions are reduced or eliminated. At admission time, additional costs are saved with the full implementation of the present invention by the use of automatic vendors that print the admission documents on demand by the buyer and with automated verification of the buyer""s ID. This function replaces the xe2x80x9cwill callxe2x80x9d method of admission document delivery and the associated cost in labor and facility overhead.
Further objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.